1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a fundus camera for photographing a fundus of an eye to be examined.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventionally, proposed is a fundus camera which has an automatic alignment function of automatically aligning a photographing optical system with an eye to be examined, an automatic focusing function of automatically focusing the photographing optical system on a fundus of the eye, and an automatic photographing function of automatically photographing the fundus based on detection results on an alignment state and a focus state (e.g., Japanese Patent Application Unexamined Publication No. Hei8-275921).
In such a fundus camera, a central portion of the fundus can be photographed relatively favorably in automatic mode (i.e., a mode of automatic alignment, automatic focusing and automatic photographing); however, in the case of photographing a peripheral portion of the fundus, it is difficult to perform the automatic alignment and the automatic focusing since a photographing optical axis deviates significantly from a visual axis of the eye, causing difficulties in the automatic photographing. Hence, when photographing a peripheral portion of the fundus, it is frequently more preferable to switch to manual mode of performing manual photographing with a photographing starting switch after performing manual alignment and focusing.
However, in the case of photographing the central portion of the fundus after photographing the peripheral portion of the fundus in the manual mode and switching to the automatic mode, a lot of trouble is given since there emerge needs both for operation of switching from the manual mode to the automatic mode, and operation of changing a presenting position of a fixation target from a position for photographing the peripheral portion of the fundus to a position for photographing the central portion of the fundus. In addition, also in the case of photographing the peripheral portion of the fundus after photographing the central portion of the fundus in the automatic mode and switching to the manual mode, a lot of trouble is given since there emerge needs both for operation of switching from the automatic mode to the manual mode, and operation of changing the presenting position of the fixation target from the position for photographing the central portion of the fundus to the position for photographing the peripheral portion of the fundus.